Salary Freeze and Tighter Rules on Lobbyists Signal Move to Clean Up Politics

President Barack Obama told his White House staff yesterday they could expect "a clean break with business as usual", including a tightening of the rules on lobbyists working in government, and a salary freeze for aides earning more than $100,000.

"During this period of economic emergency, families are tightening their belts, and so should Washington," Obama told about 50 of his senior staff members and the watching press, early in the afternoon of his first full day in office. "And that's why I am instituting a pay freeze on the salaries of my senior White House staff."

Rahm Emanuel, Obama's chief of staff and the most senior aide, earns $172,000 annually, as do several other White House personnel.

The president said he would extend from one to two years the period that government officials must wait before they can work on issues they previously lobbied on. He also announced a ban on staff receiving gifts from lobbyists, and promised a big improvement in public access to government documents.

"Transparency and the rule of law will be the touchstones of this administration," he said. Americans, he went on, "deserve a government that truly is of, and by, the American people ... We need to make the White House the people's house."

The way to make government responsible, Obama said, was to hold it accountable. As the Democratic candidate, he made transparency and ethics a key campaign issue, and he said his measures were necessary "to help restore faith in government, without which we cannot deliver the changes that we were sent here to make".

The White House event also included the swearing-in of Obama's senior staff, a ritual administered by the vice-president, Joe Biden, who made a point of asking for a copy of the oath. "My memory is not as good as Justice Roberts's," he said, in a teasing reference to the chief justice, who mangled part of Obama's swearing-in on Tuesday, prompting the incoming president to stumble on his words.

"Let me just say how proud I am of all of you, what a moment we are in," said Obama, who spent some minutes welcoming each employee personally, with hugs and back-slapping.

The ceremony was rough around the edges, bearing the marks of a president and vice-president who are still finding their feet. "Which staff are we swearing in? All of them?" Biden wondered aloud, while Obama seemed unclear when to bring proceedings to a close. "Are we done?" he asked a member of his staff. "I think I'm done."